(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an inverter driver and a load driver including the same, and a driving method thereof.
(b) Description of the Related Art
An inverter generates a driving voltage for driving a discharge lamp and supplies the driving voltage to the discharge lamp. Further, the inverter controls the brightness of the discharge lamp by controlling a current thereof. The inverter is controlled by an inverter driver.
The discharge lamp needs a high voltage when it is initially turned on. However, the high voltage has a large influence on the life of the discharge lamp. Thus, the discharge lamp needs soft starting method to gradually increase the output voltage of the inverter for extending the life of the discharge lamp when it is initially turned on.
A soft starting method using a capacitor or a starting method using a digital-analog converter is used as the soft starting method. In order to implement the soft starting method using a capacitor in the inverter driver, a separate output pin should be added to the inverter driver. Further, the digital-analog converter has a complex structure because the size of the digital-analog converter is large and the number of circuit elements is high. Accordingly, when the starting method using the digital-analog converter is implemented in the inverter driver, an area of a soft start block is increased in the inverter driver and the size of the inverter driver is increased. Thus, the cost of the inverter driver is increased.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.